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I have a Nighthawk R8000 router, and everything was working fine for a couple of years; my clients had its address (10.0.1.1) set as the DNS server in their network setup. In the last 2 weeks, I'm finding that the network keeps "going out" for client devices, but then realized that it wasn't the network was going down but the DNS was: everything was reachable by IP address but not by name. When I change my clients to use 8.8.8.8 for DNS, it works again. So, what could be happening - why has my router stopped proviing DNS like it used to, and what are best practices for DNS settings on the router and on our client devices network setup?
> [...] why has my router stopped proviing DNS like it used to [...]
Disfunctional router firmware? Does it help to restart the router? Or to reset its settings, and manually reconfigure the router? Or to try that with a different/older firmware version?
What is the R8000 using as its DNS server(s)? (BASIC > Internet : Domain Name Server (DNS) Address?) Does it (do they) work properly?
> [...] what are best practices for DNS settings on the router and on > our client devices network setup?
It depends, but generally, "Get Automatically from ISP" on the router, and the same on the clients. (That is, on the clients, use the router, which is what I'd expect DHCP from the router to give you.)
If your ISP's DNS servers are faulty/unreliable, then specify others manually on the router.
Blame assignment is job one. Change the DNS servers on the router from the ISP defaults to, say, "8.8.8.8" (and so on). Change a client device to use the ISP defaults. Does the problem follow the ISP servers settings, or the use of the router for DNS?
> [...] why has my router stopped proviing DNS like it used to [...]
Disfunctional router firmware? Does it help to restart the router? Or to reset its settings, and manually reconfigure the router? Or to try that with a different/older firmware version?
What is the R8000 using as its DNS server(s)? (BASIC > Internet : Domain Name Server (DNS) Address?) Does it (do they) work properly?
> [...] what are best practices for DNS settings on the router and on > our client devices network setup?
It depends, but generally, "Get Automatically from ISP" on the router, and the same on the clients. (That is, on the clients, use the router, which is what I'd expect DHCP from the router to give you.)
If your ISP's DNS servers are faulty/unreliable, then specify others manually on the router.
Blame assignment is job one. Change the DNS servers on the router from the ISP defaults to, say, "8.8.8.8" (and so on). Change a client device to use the ISP defaults. Does the problem follow the ISP servers settings, or the use of the router for DNS?
> Changing "Get Automatically from ISP" to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 seems to > help!
Give it a while. It's not unusual for routers running Netgear's fine firmware to fail hours or weeks after a restart (or settings change?), so I would not get too optmistic too quickly. But the general scheme is to change one item at a time in the configuration until you either recreate the problem, or never see it again. Happy hunting.
> Is there a way to ask it to automatically reboot on schedule? [...]
Not built in. You could rig an external timer to cut the power briefly. There are potentially other, unsupported schemes which could be made to work, but any such would tend to demand computer capability beyond that of a typical consumer. If you're desperate for entertainment, then a Web search for terms like, say:
netgear telnet enable
might provide some hints.
But any such (sleazy) work-around would destroy the educational aspects of proper blame assignment.
